


Beach City Ghost Tour

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Healing, Shenanigans, happy halloween!!!, the major character death is Pink Diamond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 01:56:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21110804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Spinel comes to celebrate Halloween on Earth.  Ghosts are kinda a funny idea, aren't they?  Wonder if Gems leave something like that behind.





	Beach City Ghost Tour

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!!! I'm posting this early, but... Halloween fic, all the same~ Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry for anything I might've gotten wrong.
> 
> Have a great day!!!

Earth was, apparently, full of “ghosts” all the time. This came as news to Spinel, who hadn’t had any kinda clue what these ghost thingies were until recently. When somebody got shattered, their bits and pieces were just... empty, ya know? Shards on the ground. Back in the day, it would’ve been Spinel’s job to stretch her arms up to wrap around Pink Diamond’s wrist and pull her away to something nicer so she didn’t hafta see. The Pearls would tidy up the rest, and hopefully the other Diamonds would stop feeling so grumpy soon enough. Cross all your fingers and toes, right? Cross ‘em into tangly pretzels!

Shattering meant a huge silence. No more pranks, no more little skipping dances to do while juggling whatever distracting things Spinel could scoop up from around Pink’s rooms. No more Best Friend, no more laughter. 

Shattering meant a silence even deeper than the one that’d folded around Spinel, waiting for Pink until her feet grew deep into the crumbly ruined garden. 

Not so on Earth, though, it turned out! Not so when those funny organic things, humans, up and croaked. Pink Diamond was gone, and Spinel was changed — (she had the flipped-upside-down heart to prove it, too) — but Pink’s human son Steven had been keeping in contact with her for a while now. Ever since she’d been ready to say hi to him again after... you know. Everything that happened with the injector.

“Seriously, Spinel. Thanks so much for distracting the Diamonds,” Steven had said, before they disconnected communicators that first time. “Can you show me the skit you do with the Pebbles someday? Yellow keeps trying to describe it to me, but she never gets far. Starts laughing too hard every time!”

“She does? _Really_?” Spinel had asked, and then laughed, herself. Nervous. Fiddling with a jester hat-pigtail. “I mean, yeah. I can do a skit for ya. Sounds fun!”

Steven worried about Spinel when she was away re-learning friendship again with the Diamonds, he said, and he let her worry about him when weird stuff happened around Earth. (Weird stuff was _always_ happening around Earth, by the by.) 

Weird stuff was happening around Earth just that night, actually. Hence this business with “ghosts.” Humans were fragile things, it turned out, full of mushy goo and something called “bones.” But when they shattered, they left smudges behind on the world. Apparently. Humans left behind smudges that did things like dragging people under boardwalks or stealing anything left outside on certain nights or smashing your toys together to make loud annoying sounds while you were minding your own business. That’s what Steven’s friend Sadie Killer said, anyway, on her infamous Beach City Ghost Tour. She was doing it for a human holiday — it seemed like humans had a gazillion holidays all the time forever — and most of the audience folks were people who really liked her band’s music. Gems and humans, both. Spinel mighta fit right in, if nobody remembered _she_ was the one who had turned up with an enormous sparkly murder injector some time past.

It seemed like everywhere they went, Sadie had another story of woe and restless spirits. She was wearing fancy costume paint to make herself look rotten and covered in barnacles, too, while she told ‘em — she looked like a drowned pirate, Steven had assured Spinel, just in time for the rock show she was gonna do for the fans who’d come out to see her. There were lots of drowned pirates on the Beach City Ghost Tour.

If Spinel held still long enough, later, and promised she was okay with it, Sadie Killer was gonna paint her up like a dead human too. It sounded fun, even now that Spinel was imagining lotsa flickery invisible organic things floating around all over the place. Even now that she’d found herself jumping at noises over her shoulder, just a little, and wondering for the very first time if Gems left smudges behind on the universe, too.

If they did, maybe the Diamonds’ Palace was just _full_ of them. 

If they did, then maybe _Pink_... 

Maybe, somewhere, here in Beach City, drifting around with all those old-timey humans wearing fluffy hats and monocles and not understanding what gravity was...

Ha. 

No way. Right? 

Pink couldn’t be _watching_ Spinel, could she? Nuh-uh. Spinel was holding on to a glittery plastic bag of candy corn she’d been given by a total stranger — she still wasn’t _completely_ sure it hadn’t been poisoned, but Steven assured her it was a gift and everything was gonna be okay. She was wearing a Sickly Sweet Latte costume to match Steven’s Sniffling Croissant one. They’d been watching a lot of “Crying Breakfast Friends!” lately. Hanging around Earth was becoming almost alright. Later on they were gonna drop by Steven’s dad’s Haunted Car Wash, and Spinel had agreed to help Amethyst prank Peridot over in Little Homeworld. Peridot pranked people back, Amethyst had warned, and Spinel’d said “Well, she better!” She hadn’t been in a real live actual prank war in six thousand years, and you gotta believe she had _ideas_. 

If Spinel started to imagine Pink wasn’t actually gone, though... That she was always drifting around just out of sight — 

Spinel had made so much progress. She was feeling so whole, lately, and had already been plotting out new skits to make Yellow Diamond laugh so hard that she wouldn’t be able to explain ‘em. Hopefully. The tear-stain clown paint under her eyes had been completely washed away, one day, too. Spinel had tumbled into the hallway, smiling all huge and stretchy and twisting her arms out to tuck around Pink Pearl’s eyes from behind. “Guess who?!” she’d called, and Blue Pearl... just a couple steps away, dreamlike and fluttering a hand up over her mouth... had said, “Oh, Spinel. It looks like you haven’t cried in a long time. I hadn’t noticed."

_Spinel_ hadn’t noticed either... But of course Pink Pearl could guess who was covering up her eyes easy enough, then. Psh. 

Spinel had thought there was no way she’d ever talk to Pink Diamond again. She was moving into the future. _She was learning to love again_, and...

Oh, geez. 

What if? 

What if, what if, what if? 

What could Pink Diamond even say for herself, now? Would she say anything at all?

Probably not. She hadn’t said anything for six thousand spinning star-tossed years, with Spinel waiting out in the middle of rot and nowhere, so why the heck would she wanna start now? Sadie Killer was describing a dramatic murder that may or may not have taken place along a particular pier, in the shadow of a spooky crooked lighthouse. It had inspired one of the songs for her band’s latest album, actually. _This, right here, was life._ Spinel wasn’t alone. She was happy again, and if she reached up to touch her own cheeks there wouldn’t be any tear stains left there. 

Spinel was living, even if the ghosts...

Even if...

“Hey,” Steven said. Pink Diamond’s human son, with a sad, knowing smile on. “I want to go get another of those boo-berry bite-tarts Lars made. We can come back to the tour in a minute, okay, Spinel? Wanna keep me company?” 

“Course I do,” Spinel said. Her voice sounded deflated and far away, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Maybe now we’ll actually guess Lars’s costume right. Sixth time’s the charm?”

Steven sighed. “I’ve seen so many human movies and read all these human books. Studying my whole life for this moment. But even so... I’m completely stumped.” 

They walked in a comfortable mostly-silence. Steven waved at Sadie over his shoulder, a soft, gentle thing. He was so _gentle_ with his friends, Steven. He was gentle with Spinel now, too, leading her down a road lined with rubber spiders and vegetables with faces cut into them. Smiling vegetables and angry vegetables and smooshed vegetables already caving in. If organic things left smudges on the world when they died, what kinda enormous, seething smudge would Spinel have left behind if she’d truly rotted the planet? She felt sick, thinking about all of this gone. Imagining _Steven_ gone. When she reached out to hold his arm, he didn’t pull away. 

Steven was gonna go meet up with his human girlfriend, Connie, pretty soon. They were gonna do a Spooky Movie Date, around when Spinel went to go play pranks with Amethyst. But if his friends needed him, Spinel knew Steven would make time for them. Make time for her. If she wasn’t okay, if she was feeling lost or panicky or like the old rage and poison were rising up back all through her, he would make sure she was safe before ducking out for a Night of Haunted Romance. And what’s more, Connie would _expect_ him to. 

Earth was full of ghosts. Earth had almost rotted alive, under Spinel’s jaunty curled-up jester shoes. Rotted just like the garden. 

But Earth was still here, full of friends. 

(And ghosts.)

(Maybe?)

Spinel and Steven discussed possibilities for Lars’s costume, in hushed, very serious voices. They passed by Pearl, Garnet and Amethyst, who were helping Steven’s dad disguise his car wash with cobwebs and mist projections and a lot of drippy slime for the walls. Pearl was very carefully not touching any of the slime, and Amethyst had already announced that it tasted pretty dang good. A little like expired batteries. 

Spinel thought maybe later she’d ask Steven if _he_ believed in ghosts. If he ever wondered. She knew he’d understand. Or... or she thought maybe he’d understand? Could be she wouldn’t ask him, after all. Bad memories, uneasy thoughts. 

But knowing Steven, he might just bring the whole idea up himself, soon enough, trying to string together something helpful to say. Spinel wouldn’t press him too hard. The night air was crisp and smelled like sugar, like cinnamon tea Pearl brewed and then didn’t bother to drink, like the stiff cloth of Spinel’s Sickly Sweet Latte travel cup suit. She was wearing the straw at a jaunty angle, and the shadow her whipped cream left on the sidewalk looked so goofy and new. 

She’d needed a walk. She’d needed a change. Steven had guessed that, just like Spinel woulda tried to guess for Pink Diamond, once upon a time. Leading her out of the throne room after somebody just got, y’know, shattered. Silent forever. Just like Spinel would guess that kinda thing for Steven, too, if she ever got a chance. If someone else didn’t beat her to it. 

They didn’t get Lars’s costume right this next time, either, though.

Aw, well. 


End file.
